WELCOME to Poetry Matters, the blog of Ireland’s Dedalus Press, bringing you news, interviews, samples and much more.
Do you remember how or why you started writing poems? The very first poems were written in the classroom. They were set tasks. Commissions if you will. The teacher would instruct us to write a poem about an elephant, or
How/when did you start to write? I’ve loved poetry for as long as I remember – Keats was a favourite when I was a teenager. I did a BA in English and French, and relished the immersion in literature in
How/when did you start to write? Did poems precede prose or vice versa? When I was a small child, Dad would invite me to tell a story or sing a song for the family after supper. I would stand by
Circling the Subject: Leeanne Quinn’s second collection of poems, Some Lives, introduced by Aoife Lynch Leeanne Quinn’s second collection, is a rich and generous exploration of how poetry is made and how it makes meaning. Simultaneously intimate and outward-looking,
Poetry publishing is an odd business at the best of times. But yesterday’s unusual exchange with a customer was of the kind that makes the more difficult parts worthwhile. In the late morning I received a call from what looked like
FOLLOWING is our series of 5 postcards, issued in June 2020 to mark the publication of The Word Ark: A Pocket Book of Animal Poems, and included free with the first 100 copies of the book purchased directly from this
FOLLOWING is a selection of our Isolation PoemCards, chosen from the many submitted via the comments section on the Dedalus Press Facebook page, during March and April 2020. Thanks to all the poets, and the many hundreds of others who
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, one of the contributors to Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets, considers home, belonging and the writing life I had found an aerial shot of Dublin on Google, laid out like an intricate carpet, glowing under the rise
Poet and translator Keith Payne on a favourite book, Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (City Lights Books. The Pocket Poets Series: Number 19) The idea is really simple. Every day on your lunch hour, if a lunch hour you take,
WE WERE DELIGHTED to be directed to an interview with the distinguished Irish poet and poetry teacher James J McAuley, conducted by Phyllis Silver in 1983 for a programme once again available on Spokane Public Radio. Jim, to his
We are delighted to report that Mutsuo Takahashi, whose On Two Shores: New and Selected Poems Dedalus published back in 2006 (and reissued only a few months ago in a handsome hardback edition) has been announced as the inaugural recipient
Passionate, courageous, incisive, inspiring – poet and fiction writer Grace Wells answers our occasional 7 Questions on Poetry, and gets to the heart of what really matters in the writing life. 1. How/when did you start to write? Did poems
First a brief recap of the year just ended, then back to the future! Before we consider the Dedalus Press 2020 vision, let’s take a brief look back at the year just ended. 2019: What A Year That Was With
KICKING OFF A VERY STRONG YEAR of new publications, on Tuesday 4th February, 2020 at Poetry Ireland we present the launch of no fewer than five new books: Double Vision is the umbrella name for two new books by Paddy
NOW AVAILABLE Following an open call which drew hundreds of submissions, this major new anthology of ‘writing from Ireland’ reflects the changing nature of Irish society, with contributors hailing from all over the world. Selected by Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi and Pat
Poet Enda Wyley writes about her favourite book of poems A Book of Luminous Things, Czeslaw Milosz’s anthology of international poetry, is one of my favourite books of poems. Inspiring in content, it succeeds as a collection of short poems
For those who may be interested, the following is the full text of our February 2019 response to the Irish Times’ invitation to comment on the MEAS report into Gender in Poetry Publishing in Ireland: 2008–2017. We appreciate that the
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The late Macdara Woods recalls the genesis of his poem Fire And Snow And Carnevale, perhaps best known in its musical setting by Anúna, part of the original Riverdance project Steering clear of mystique and mystification I would have
US-based Irish poet Mary O’Donoghue on the background to her villanelle, My Daughter in Winter Costume, included in the 2017 Dedalus Press anthology The Deep Heart’s Core (eds. Pat Boran & Eugene O’Connell) I saw the sculpture ‘My Daughter
